


We are what they grow beyond

by A_Starry_Night



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24492766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Starry_Night/pseuds/A_Starry_Night
Summary: Who is this redheaded young man that's fallen into Rey's path? And why does he call himself Ben Skywalker?
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Ben Skywalker, Rey & Ben Skywalker, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this shortly after Last Jedi came out, but I've only now gotten around to typing it up. Personally I am a Legends girl through and through, which is where this story idea comes from-- I'm not a big fan of the direction that Disney took with the sequels, but I still hope I've written Disney's characters well and fairly. 
> 
> For canon, this takes place following Last Jedi. For Legends, after Troy Denning's novel Crucible. The characters will be doing a lot of quick explaining later on if anyone's not entirely knowledgeable about Legends verse.

_Something something new something different what is it what can it be no one knows we’re here how can there be someone here_

The Force was rippling and seething like an ocean at high tide, and Ben Skywalker opened bleary eyes to find that he was staring at a grey sky full of roiling clouds. Despite his experience as a pilot (and his dad’s own sense of flying, which was an experience in and of itself), his stomach was unsettled, and he felt like he’d been hit by a bantha.

“What,” he croaked, “the living _kriff_ …?”

Then he paused, finally catching onto the emotions and wild thoughts that were making the Force go mad; someone was in trouble, and he was taken aback by the ferocity of fear and cutting focus felt by the one under attack. He staggered to his feet, swearing silently when the world still tilted violently on its axis, and ruthlessly used the Force to steady himself.

He was answered by the Force screaming at him of danger, and with reflexes harshly learned from fighting in wars Ben threw himself down on the ground in a tuck-and-roll motion that landed him ten feet away from where he’d been with his lightsaber drawn. The blaster bolts that would have cut into his midsection had he not moved tore through the air to hit a twisted gnarled tree standing twenty meters away, and at the same moment Ben caught sight of white armor and a familiar looking helmet he had rarely seen outside of the Imperial Remnant.

Stormtroopers.

His stomach clenching, he fell into a defensive position with his lightsaber still unlit, waiting for the offenders to make the next move. When they made it, it was in the usual way—another volley of blaster fire that he evaded with another series of tuck and roll, and as he gained his feet the familiar whoosh-hiss of an igniting lightsaber from behind them made them all pause for just a moment.

Too long. In their moment of indecision, the stormtroopers made their first mistake—their organized rhythm stalled as half of them turned one way while the others stayed put, and in that intervening second Ben was moving. Lightsaber up and in an offensive position he charged right at them, using the Force at the last second to nudge several of the blasters to the side just enough that their answering shots would be slightly off-center—

And then the other lightsaber-wielder came into view at the same time, a lithe brown-haired girl who cried a battle-roar as she descended upon the stormtroopers. She was quick and brutal, lacking refinement in her movements, but she was effective—as the group of stormtroopers facing her opened fire, she spun and jumped to evade fire, her blade catching and returning some of them, and within a few seconds both she and Ben had managed to put down three or four of the stormtroopers. Those remaining took to harsher and heavier fire, most of which Ben managed to evade, but one bolt managed to graze his left arm, another his thigh, and he hissed a curse under his breath. He was mildly distracted by the girl, an unknown factor in this battle, but he realized that it was her thoughts, that wild rush of emotion, that had dragged him back to awareness that he had sensed, and it was confusing to him. 

“Down!” she called, both audibly and through the Force, and Ben’s instincts again took over—he fell flat on his stomach as her lightsaber flashed overhead, cutting down the remaining stormtroopers, and he watched it fly back to her when she called it.

The entire ordeal had taken less than thirty seconds.

Barely winded by his exertion, Ben climbed to his feet, gingerly testing how well his leg was against the blaster wound on his thigh, and found the girl looking back at him with a suddenly feral expression and the Force thrumming with her suspicion. Her lightsaber was still lit.

“What the Force are you doing here?”

~/~/~/~/~

This was supposed to be nothing but a scouting mission, a trip to find another planet to hide and regroup from the First Order’s last devastating attack on the Rebellion on Crait. Rey had volunteered for the assignment dimply for the fact that it would allow her space and time to come to terms with all she had gone through the last few weeks. Ahch-to was a heavy weight on her shoulders, the odd mirrored dark side cave still haunted her dreams, and most of all her wearied disappointment in Ben Solo—Kylo Ren—continually at her.  
She needed a break from the chaos. From the people. 

She hadn’t expected to find these First Order recon scouts here on this backwater planet, and they had taken her by surprise; her Force powers were still largely intuitive, instinctual, and it was still possible to catch her wildly off-guard—which these stormtroopers had.

So where had this young man come from? She had scanned the entire planet, and there had been no other human signatures anywhere to be found.

The redhead stared at her incredulously. “Me?” he spluttered. “I wasn’t the one who was being hunted by those stormtroopers! What are they doing after you, anyway?”

Rey stared at him, nonplussed. “Why are you so surprised? I’m number one on the First Order’s most wanted list!”

“But stormtroopers haven’t been around in decades, and those that are operate in the Unknown Regions.”

“There are no Unknown Regions,” Rey stated flatly, staring at him. The Force was quiet, calm, even with all of her suspicions. It was telling her she had nothing to fear from this stranger, so why was her back crawling with sudden dread and confusion? “I think it’s about time you told me who you are.” She hefted her lightsaber higher as a warning, hoping it would unsettle him enough he would listen to her.

Instead she watched his expression turn from defiance, to shock, and then—to her surprise—suddenly dangerous anger. His attention was fixed solely on her lightsaber. The Force stretched with his disbelief. “Where did you get that?” His voice was low. 

“Luke Skywalker gave it to me.” Technically she had taken it after he had thrown it aside, but he had never demanded it back, and she had worked hard for days to repair the damage it had sustained during her confrontation with Ren.

He scoffed. “Look, I know for a fact that there’s only one person he gave that lightsaber to, and it definitely wasn’t you. Give it to me.”

“No.” Her own anger was quickly flaring out of her control and she stepped away from him. “I will not.”

“I’m not going to ask you again—"

But Rey was already acting to push him with a Force shove, realizing that he was going to try to use the Force to grab the lightsaber from her. For a moment her thoughts flashed back to her confrontation with Kylo Ren just weeks ago, of the strange tug-a-war they had had over this same lightsaber, and she felt suddenly light-headed, giddy with the strange irony this moment was. To her astonishment she watched him fall backwards and then catch himself just as quickly, pirouetting on his knee to face her again, exerting a control over the Force she hadn’t seen before.

And then it hit her, so obvious that she wanted to kick herself over such an obvious thing. He didn’t feel Dark, he was not drawing upon the Dark Side to feed his abilities, but he had been trained in the ways of the Jedi, and trained well. 

Could he maybe be a survivor of the night Master Skywalker’s Academy was slaughtered? 

She deactivated the lightsaber. “Did Luke Skywalker train you?”

He blinked, thrown by the question. His eyes were very blue, she noticed now, and oddly familiar. “My cousin did, for a while. My dad’s been teaching me the rest.”

“There are other Jedi out there?” Rey felt a flare of sudden excitement, of hope, and she took a step closer. Her childlike behavior unnerved him, and he took a step backwards, wary and watchful. “Did they survive then? Kylo Ren didn’t kill them?”

Now he looked downright confused, and uneasy. “Kylo Ren? Who is _that_? Sounds like some Sith wannabe who stands in front of the mirror and practices his evil face.” Rey’s face clearly gave him answer, then, because the unease shifted and he looked both exasperated and tired. “Oh come on! Don’t tell me we never stop seeing Sith, I’ve had enough of them after the Lost Tribe.”

“Kylo Ren is the most feared man in the galaxy, and he leads the First Order as the Supreme Emperor. How can you not know that?”

“I don’t know, how can you not know what the Unknown Regions are, why are there stormtroopers still around, and _why do you have my dad’s old lightsaber_?”

His outburst stunned her again, left her breathless, and she could only stare at him when his last question fully registered. His _father’s_ lightsaber… “What is your name?”

He gritted his teeth, trying to control a sudden burst of temper. “Ben Skywalker.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now let's see where Legends!Luke ended up, shall we? Don't worry-- we'll get back to Rey and Ben soon enough, and for all of you who are wondering, this will be Rey and Ben mainly as a story as they both grow in the Force and as Knights. But I thought that the dymanic between Rey and canon!Luke was squandered terribly and so this is my way of trying to make up for that.

Something was very, _very_ wrong. That was probably the understatement of the year, Luke thought idly to himself; and it was probably a jinx too, since the infamous Skywalker Luck—as Ben liked to call it—usually turned out to be laughing at him afterwards.

_There’s no such thing as luck, son._

_Yeah, right. Uncle Han probably keeps a running tally of how many times he’s proved you wrong, you know._

What Ben didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, anyway, but that tally sheet was very long. 

Lush green leaves blew in a gentle breeze far above his head, the wind laden with the smell of approaching rain; it had been well over forty years since he had left Tatooine behind, but the moisture farmer in him would always marvel at the idea of a rain shower. There was a headache forming behind his eyes and for a moment he feared he was going to throw up and he rolled over onto his side in case he did.

There was no sign of his son.

Groaning, he hauled himself upright, suddenly feeling his sixty years, and swallowed down his urge to call for Ben aloud. Their scouting mission looking for rumored members of the Lost Tribe of Sith had clearly gone wrong somewhere—he just didn’t know how it had. Having cloaked himself in the Force, he couldn’t feel his son nearby but the space Ben occupied in his head was enough to let him know Ben was alive.

It would have to do for now.

The father in him wanted to immediately start looking for Ben but the Jedi Master he was opted to take things carefully; there was something off-kilter, not quite right, that was sending an odd sense of warning shivering down his spine. He’d spent too long trusting in his instincts to ignore them now, so he hauled himself carefully to his feet and looked around.

His first thought was that he was on Yavin IV with all of the bright greenery and tall arching trees, but of course the forest moon was long-dead, changed by terraforming during the Yuuzhan Vong war twenty years before. His surroundings were silent and utterly still, like a held breath before a charge, and his instincts were screaming at him to watch his back. 

He could hear the distant sound of land speeders, hushed in their way by the surrounding vegetation, and with little option he started on his way in that direction; his shielding from the Force was still strong, and he dared only the faintest trace of the Force to reach out to his surroundings and tell him what he could possibly be walking into. There were several somebodies out there, on high alert and focused as only a hunted party could, and he had been in the Rebellion too long to not recognize this. Whoever it was, they were hiding. But they didn’t feel evil, nor did they stink of the Dark Side, and he marginally relaxed.

In the end, he blamed his senses being off that ultimately allowed him to be sneaked up on; he really truly hoped that Ben wouldn’t ever hear about it, either, because then his son would never allow him to live it down. Either way, he realized too late that he was being watched, and before he could do anything about it his tail was moving. 

It was a young man, dark-skinned and suspicious, but his blaster was steady and so was his stance. A soldier’s stance, trained well and not easily rattled. “What are you doing out here?”

At least he wasn’t shooting and asking questions later; Luke was willing to let the young man be for the moment without reaching for his lightsaber and answered honestly. “I wish I knew.”

“Where did you come from? This is an undocumented planet!” The blaster was raised higher until it was almost level with Luke’s face. Wary now but still hoping to avoid violence, he raised his hands up into clear view and shook his head. 

“I really can’t tell you that. My son and I were out scouting an unknown planet ourselves and we ran into trouble. Now I don’t know where he is and I don’t know where to find him, but this is most definitely not the planet we were on.”

The young man studied him for a very long moment, looking for a lie, but Luke kept his gaze silently and said nothing else. His lightsaber was a comforting weight hidden beneath his robes, but he ultimately had no need to use it. “The General will need to see you.”

“Whatever you like.” Don’t present a threat—it was the greatest piece of advice Luke had ever been told when it came to facing an unknown party, and he’d been careful to follow that throughout the years. He’d cultivated that image of unassuming quiet and calmness so well that he was almost always underestimated by even the enemies who knew all of the stories of his life.

The First Tribe learned that lesson the hard way.

So he quietly and calmly allowed himself to be escorted through the forest; at one point he heard his companion speaking into a mic about how he was bringing an unknown man into base, and that the General would need to be told. A tinny voice on the other end confirmed his statement and reported back a few minutes later that they would need to go to the General’s quarters. 

“What’s your name, son?” 

The young man looked vaguely startled by Luke abruptly addressing him. “Uh, Finn,” he answered after a moment, still suspicious and trying to hide it. “Do you call every guy younger than you ‘son’?”

Luke grinned to himself, remembering Raynar Thul—at the time UnuThul—becoming incensed when he was addressed such. _‘We are not your son!’_ “It’s better than _kid_ ,” he remarked genially.

“Good point. It just makes you sound really old.”

Luke actually laughed at that, both startled and amused by the remark. They were approaching a wide expanse of stone wall, a sheer cliff that was interspersed with cave entrances; the roaring of waterfalls was loud now, a rumbling that he heard even where he’d first lain amongst the trees, and for a moment he simply looked at the sight before him and marveled in its beauty. Then Finn was moving forward and leading them to a particularly hidden cave entrance and waved him through. 

Inside it was a veritable city. Within twenty feet of the entrance, which was very narrow, the space suddenly expanded into a cavern. It was so large that trees were growing interspersed where erected computer terminals and wires and the like had been set. There weren’t very many people about where Luke could see them, but maybe that was for the best; clearly Finn had the same thought because he seemed to untense slightly. “C’mon. General’s quarters are this way.”

The cave extended for miles, and these people had taken full advantage of it; their surroundings were a mess of the natural and the industrial, whole rooms and hallways built by metal bulkheads and automatic doors that he thought might be recycled from old ships. The General’s quarters were a fair distance from the entrance but not so far as to be difficult to reach in an emergency, and Finn stopped him before they entered. “You’ll need to give me any weapons you have. Can’t have you go in armed.”

Luke had expected this, too, and it was with little hesitation that he handed over his own blaster—a rare occurrence for him to be carrying one at all, but a blaster was still a good ally to have sometimes. He was more reluctant to hand over his lightsaber, and he was a bit surprised when Finn didn’t immediately demand it, but he took that as an excuse to keep ahold of it in case the General turned out to be a true danger. 

He didn’t trust any of this. The Force was still screaming at him that something was wrong.

“Got a visitor for you, ma’am,” Finn said as he walked in. “Found him wandering the forest. Says he doesn’t know where he is.”

There were three people in the rooms; a man with curly black hair, and two women. The first woman glanced up from a map that they had spread out on a table, dismissing Luke before she abruptly did a double-take and gasped. “General!” she exclaimed, her attention still on Luke, and the shock in her voice made the other woman look up and around.

It was Leia. 

Luke was so blindsided by her appearance that he gaped at her for a moment, unable to fathom how or why his sister would be hiding in a cave on an unknown planet. “Leia, what—? I thought you were on Ossus with the others!”

The unknown man and woman were both openly staring at him now, but it was Leia’s response that truly shocked him. She went very pale and for a moment it seemed like her knees were going to give out, but she rallied and instead turned to Finn. “Where did he say he came from?”

But Finn could only shake his head. “From another planet, that’s all he could say. He mentioned something about a son.”

Leia’s mouth thinned. “Really? I didn’t realize that Luke Skywalker ever had a son.”

Now Finn was staring at Luke with an open mouth and true shock coloring his expression, struck temporarily speechless by her words. “But he’s—Rey said—”

But Luke ignored him, taken again so aback by his sister’s words that he couldn’t do anything but stand there as he tried to figure out what she was saying. “Leia, how could you have possibly forgotten about Ben?”

The temperature in the room dropped; the Force was screaming at him wrong wrong **wrong** and Finn’s sharp intake of breath was somehow deafened in the intervening moment of Luke’s question and Leia’s answer. 

And that was to coldly, calmly, turn to the young man and grab something from his belt before turning back to Luke.

“ _Leia!_ ”

Surprise and bewilderment seeing his sister had made him a split second too slow; by the time he realized that the danger sense making his back tingle was because of the blaster in her hand she was already firing. Luke had just a moment longer to wonder before the stun bolt hit him full on and the world went black as he fell unconscious to the floor. 

~/~/~/~/~

A hush had fallen in Leia’s quarters as Finn and Poe and Quinzel looked in complete shock at the man fallen at their feet. Of course the Resistance had been told by Leia weeks ago that Luke Skywalker had died saving them at Crait, so they were understandably taken aback.

But Leia…

Leia was _furious_.

Only the thinning of her lips and the shaking of her hand on its cane belied it, but there was a fire boiling in her stomach and veins as she gazed down at him. He disgusted her. “Commander,” she snapped to Poe, who stepped forward hurriedly, “go and get the stun cuffs that Doctor Hylos was working on and bring them here. Now.” She paused. “All of you will follow him out.”

“General—”

“That’s an _order_ , Commander. Go.”

Her tone brooked no argument. She turned her attention back to the man she’d stunned as the door slid open and they all filed out after Poe. Carefully, she approached him. He wasn’t close to waking up yet if the Force was telling her correctly so she lowered the blaster slightly. Grief abruptly gripped her by the throat as she looked him over. By all looks he was her brother; same build, even the same cleft chin, but his greying hair was still blonde rather than the dusty brown it had darkened to, and her brother had grown a beard that this man lacked. Looking even closer she was astonished to find that his right cheek even bore the scarring the wampa attack had given him on Hoth all those years ago.

It made no sense. 

“Luke,” she whispered despite herself, wishing that this man really was her brother. She missed her roughish scoundrels more than she could or ever would admit but they would never be together again now; she may one day be reunited with Luke in the Force, but Han… Han was _dead_. Gone for good.

Her heart hardened. She had lost so much, and now this man was mocking her. Straightening her shoulders and spine, Leia turned on her heel and seated herself on one of her chairs with the blaster again pointed solidly on him, her decision made. She would wait for Poe to bring her the stun cuffs. 

Then she would get her answers.

~/~/~/~/~

Luke woke again with an ache in his temple and a cottony taste in his mouth; still withdrawn from the Force there was no way of banishing the aftereffects of a stun-shot, and he refused to show his full extent of control until it was absolutely necessary. 

Leia had stunned him. His own sister had turned a weapon on him and knocked him unconscious. But the Leia-place in the back of his mind was suddenly, _achingly_ , quiet. Like the Mara-spot had been these past few years. Panic made his eyes snap open and he surged upwards. “Leia—!”

“Don’t move.”

He turned to find his sister seated stone-faced and grim in a chair near the cot he’d been placed in. “What—?” To his surprise he found a pair of stun-cuffs on his wrists like he was some sort of common criminal, and what was worse was there was still a blaster in Leia’s hand. Staring at her he hadn’t felt so wrongfooted (so _frightened_ ) in years. “Leia,” he said carefully, “what’s happened?”

Her expression didn’t twitch; neither did the blaster. “You will call me General,” she said softly, and her voice was deeper and raspier than usual. Come to think of it she didn’t look quite right, either, and her clothes were rather fancier than anything he’d seen his sister wear in a while. 

“General?” He almost laughed. “Han get tired of the title, then?”

Now her expression did twitch, and into a look he’d hoped to never see again. His stomach knotted. “Han Solo is dead. If you really were Luke Skywalker, then you would have known that.”

His jaw dropped. “Really—? Leia, it’s me! Force, what’s happened to you? What do you mean Han’s—” His voice cracked before he could begin to say the dreaded word. Instinctively he tried to reach out to her through the Force and felt a sharp crackling pain erupt from the cuffs like an electric jolt, and he slammed backwards against the bulkhead as his body automatically tried to escape the pain.

Leia’s dark eyes were waiting for him to look up. “I was wondering if you were Force sensitive. Special stun cuffs,” she explained, motioning to them with the blaster. “Adapted specifically to Force users. On a low setting it prevents Force-usage by shocking those trying to use them; on a high enough setting, it can kill. Don’t make me turn it up to that.”

The cold matter-of-fact delivery of her words truly made his blood freeze. “Force, what’s happened to you? This is something _Palpatine_ would have done!”

“What’s happened is that we’re at _war_ ,” Leia said with enough ice in her voice to chill Hoth twice over, “which again you would know if you were Luke Skywalker.”

His stomach dropped. “Has the Lost Tribe made a resurgence?”

He didn’t need the Force to realize that his question threw her; although her moment of confusion was quickly smoothed over, he had known her too long to not know she was struck silent. Then: “It’s the First Order that’s at war with us. What intel have you been given?”

“Intel. You think, what, that I’m a spy? What in the nine hells of Corellia gave you that impression? You _know_ I’m not any good at subterfuge, there’s a reason why I’m not the assassin in the family.” It was an old joke, long gone dusty in the years since Mara’s death—technically the joke could be applied to Ben since his time as Jacen’s Sith Apprentice, but Ben had never made that full commitment to his mother’s learned craft, and anyway it made Luke’s skin crawl labeling his son as an assassin _anything_.

But Leia didn’t show any signs of recognition at his words. “My brother is dead,” she whispered hoarsely. “So why are you taunting me?”

“Leia, I can honestly admit that I don’t know everything, but trust me when I say I’m pretty sure I’d know if I’d died sometime over the intervening thirty-so years.” He stared at her a moment, thinking the facts through. She believed Han dead as well as Luke himself; she had no knowledge about the Lost Tribe of the Sith and only made reference to the First Order, whatever that happened to be. “What’s the date?”

“What?”

“What’s the date, today, _right now_?”

Leia was tempted to deny him even that small bit of knowledge, but what was in the harm of knowing the date? “10.6.34 BBY,” she said with a short hesitation. 

Oh. Luke swallowed past a suddenly dry throat. “The last thing I remember before I ended up here, the date was 8.16.45BBY.”

She paled at the response and its implications as it sank in. It seemed completely ludicrous, but she could sense no lie in his words or stance—and anyway, why would he paint the date as the _future_? Unless, of course, he had no reason to lie. “And _where_ , pray, were you before?”

He hesitated, thinking of the best way to explain. “We… had heard a rumor about the Dagger of Mortis, where it could be. My son and I found ourselves in the Unknown Regions on a planet without a name, and no sign of the Dagger.”

“But you found something nonetheless.” It was not a question.

He nodded. “Something… it wasn’t a doorway, not in a traditional sense, and we weren’t stupid enough to go through it purposefully, but the Sith had been following our progress in secret and attacked us. We were cornered with no other escape route.”

Leia’s mouth twitched like she was hiding the urge to grin. “So what you’re saying is that you were both still stupid enough to go through that doorway.”

“Suppose so, yeah.” He shifted uncomfortably, but she was not going to be assuaged so easily. 

“You realize how utterly impossible a story this is? You’re telling me that you lived an entirely different life than the one I _know_ my brother lived because _I was there_ , but you have no reason to lie about and make up such a ludicrous statement about fictitious Lost Tribes and a Dagger. What are the options left to us, then? You’re even saying you’re from a future date!”

“You’re asking me? I don’t think I’ve ever had to learn about the possibility of something like this happening. Unless we’re both under some sort of mind trick, we’re looking at alternate realities.” 

“Aren’t Jedi Masters supposed to know everything?” she teased him gently and then wanted to kick herself for her slip—this man was _not_ her brother!

“Yoda may have had a long enough life to pull that lie off, but I don’t.” So the sardonic wit was the same, Leia noticed with detached interest, but she steadied her grip on the blaster and didn’t allow it to move from where it was pointed at him. He noticed. “Leia, you can’t deny there’s a lot of this that points to that possibility.”

“It could still be a scheme. A trap from the First Order to undermine us with a fantastic story of alternate realities and send us a spy in the form of the galaxy’s most famous Jedi.”

His expression went flat. “Now you’re just looking for a way out of agreeing. Just minutes ago you were telling me that I’m supposed to be dead, and now you’re trying to tell me that this so-called First Order would be stupid enough to try to infiltrate your base with a lookalike of a man who’s supposed to be dead? That’s not only illogical, it’s insane.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe _I_ am.” So much had happened the last few weeks, the last months. She’d lost her husband, her son, and her brother in one consecutive move, and she was left by herself again. Alone.

Except, if this man was telling the truth, she wasn’t quite so alone now. Her brother, here. _Alive_.

The Force whispered to her as it had been all along, telling her that he was telling the truth. She hadn’t wanted to hear it, but now it was too much to ignore and she swallowed down her burgeoning hope. “How can I believe you?”

Luke eyed her half-warily, half-sadly. He was having a hard time himself believing in the possibility of alternate realities but he didn’t understand how it could possibly be anything else. Not when faced with the different peoples, the unknown First Order, and the fact that she said the date was almost 34ABY. “I’ve lived this year already, Leia. None of this happened, and I’m eleven years older than you are.”

She wanted to believe him, well and truly. “Your right hand. How did you lose it?”

It still hurt him to remember those days of the Rebellion; only Mara had known he still suffered the occasional nightmare of the black-clad Darth Vader hunting him in the bowels of Bespin. “Vader cut it off in a lightsaber duel when I was twenty-one. Too easy a question, Leia. _General_. That’s not common knowledge but it can still be found out.”

Leia raised a brow in silent approval, and challenge. “Tell me something only my brother would know, then. Something from the days of the Rebellion.” 

That was easy. “On Endor, I was preparing to go and confront Vader. You found me out on a catwalk by myself and it was then that I told you about Vader being my father—our father, rather, since I told you we were siblings then too.”

The blaster was suddenly wavering; her eyes were bright. “What did you tell me? What were your exact words?”

“’The Force is strong with my family. My father has it. I have it. And my _sister_ has it.’” He hadn’t spoken those words aloud for forty years but still they came without trouble; it was a memory that was burned into his mind forever. He held her gaze steadily, willing her to believe him for both their sakes.

Leia’s fingers trembled and pressed down on the trigger as the weight of his words hit her fully, startling them both, and she felt a split second of panic as she realized that the blaster wasn’t on stun anymore. To her utter astonishment he reacted faster than the eye could blink; the cuffs crackled and spat with released energy as he used the Force to deflect the bolt and she felt his pain as they reacted thusly. The realization that this man was her brother, however impossible it seemed, made her instinctively reach out with her own Force ability and attempt to alleviate the pain he was feeling.

Too much. Her body had not completely recovered from its coma, and such a surge of the Force and the pain short-circuited whatever control she had. Leia gasped and then her vision went black.

~/~/~/~/~

“Leia. _Leia_.”

She woke to hands shaking her gently, and she opened bleary eyes to find Luke bent over her with an expression of mixed annoyance and concern on his face. When seeing that she was awake again the concern fled into relief. The annoyance only deepened.

“Did you even _try_ to train in this dimension, Leia? That shock could have killed you!”

“Don’t— _start_ , Luke.” If there was any doubt at all in her mind about his identity it was banished now. She’d dealt with years—decades really—with Luke come after her to train as a Jedi, and only she and her brother had known her refusals had continually annoyed and flustered him. She allowed him a moment to help her sit up. “I’m sure _your_ Leia is a perfectly _wonderful_ Jedi who followed your advice—”

“No.” His grin was rueful as she looked at him. “It took her thirty years to actually become an apprentice, and I wasn’t the one who trained her. I was willing to simply give her a spot in the Order, but she wanted to do it fairly.”

“ _You_ didn’t train her? But… that means—how big is the Order in your reality?”

“Several Masters, dozens of Knights—my Leia included—and even more apprentices. We… lost several about a decade back, but we’re rebuilding.”

The knowledge both heartened and saddened her knowing that at least somewhere her brother had lived to see a healthy, strong new Jedi Order. And she herself was a Knight there. Although… “Han. Is he…?”

She watched Luke’s expression dim slightly. “Alive,” he nodded, “and just as ornery and stubborn as he always is.”

“But I don’t have a son named Ben.” Sense was coming from confusion now remembering him mentioning a son. “You do?” At his nod she straightened. “Do you have any other children, then? Does this mean that your sister and your Han have no children of their own?”

He hesitated. “You have a daughter. Jaina. You—had two sons… but both of them have died.” There was no mistaking the grief coloring his voice and it was enough to twist Leia’s own heart. “I have only my Ben.”

“A wife?”

Now she didn’t even need the Force to catch the flash of pain her question caused. “Dead almost five years now.”

There was definitely a story there in his tone, in the grief that she could hear still etched in the words, but now was not the time for it. She allowed herself only to say, “I’m sorry.”

He surprised her when he shook his head. “Don’t be. Not after you’ve lost Han.”

Her husband’s name knocked all the wind from her chest in one solid punch, the loss still too fresh to fully accept. She had to sit in silence for a long moment before she had the strength to nod her acknowledgment, but when she did it was with the stately air of the Princess she had been raised as. They sat in silence together for a very long time in a mood not quite easy but also not awkward, satisfied enough to simply observe and come to terms with this new impossibility. “So is this it, then?” she finally asked, but she suspected his thoughts were running along a similar vein. “What are we going to do about you, Luke Skywalker?”

“Find a way back to my own universe—after I find my son. Whatever events are transpiring here, neither of us are meant to be a part of them.” Maybe that was a lie, but he wasn’t about to try and find out the will of the Force yet. His thoughts were on Ben. Which reminded him… “So you have a son named Ben? Why isn’t he here with you now at the base?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wookiepedia and all of the novels never really set up how the SW universe sets up a calendar, so I made it pretty close to ours. Apologies if I got the dates horrifically wrong-- but at least the years ABY are right.


End file.
